‘It was a “U.S.-orchestrated coup” that toppled the Marcos government, according to an expose by the Washington-based Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).’
THE “Edsa ‘86” revolt that overthrew the government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos was in reality a “U.S.-orchestrated coup,” as revealed in an expose by the Washington-based Executive Intelligence Review (EIR). It’s starkly in contrast to the tales peddled by Cory Aquino’s yellow adorers in political, social, business and media circles for a quarter of a century now.
That military coup – led by then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile (now senate President), then AFP Chief of Staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos (who became president after Cory’s coup-studded six-year-term), and Col. Gregorio Honasan (now senator) – was “a classic case study of the post-World War II preferred method of imposing colonial control under another name.”
The EIR report disclosed, too, that George Shultz (then U.S. Secretary of state) performed the twin roles of “economic hit man, destroying and taking full control of the Philippine economy, and coup master, in deposing the Philippine President in favor of an IMF puppet while calling the operation people power from the late 1970s through the February 1986 coup, and beyond.”
“This subversion and destruction of one of America’s most important allies, by the supranational financial institutions which Schultz and his ilk represent,” the EIR article continued, “was exposed in both the United states and the Philippines… The lesson of the subversion of the Philippines in the 1980s for today is clear. Shultz is the eminence grise behind the neo-conservatives in Washington who were responsible for the 1986 coup.”
Succeeding paragraphs of the EIR article dealt with the fate of Marcos before and after his overthrow by the Shultz cabal, including what he achieved after his election to the presidency in 1965 and on to the time he imposed martial law in 1972. Here are more excerpts:
“The popular memory of Ferdinand Marcos today, in the U.S. and the Philippine, is largely shaped by the massive disinformation campaign created in the early 1980s by the circles around then Secretary of State Shultz and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz. Marcos was accused of corruption, human rights violations, plunder, and even murder of a political opponent, Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. (Noynoy’s father) — and this caricature is repeated ad nauseam still today.”
“While Marcos was not without faults, he was by far the last Filipino head of state to have understood the challenge of true leadership in a world slipping towards chaos. His overthrow by the Shultz cabal had nothing to do with the charges issued publicly, but these were intended to stop his national development policies…”
When Marcos was elected President in 1965, EIR continued, he “…set out immediately to establish Philippine food self-sufficiency in rice and corn. This required breaking the control of the landed aristocracy left over from the Spanish imperial era…”
Marcos, who did not rise from the elite class, but was trained as a lawyer, “…focused on basic agricultural infrastructure, especially irrigation, in the food-producing regions of Luzon and Mindanao. Credit facilities, mechanization, and the introduction of high-yield rice varieties, which needed irrigation, resulted in the elimination of rice imports by 1968. Land reform, primarily apolitical problem, remained illusive.
“However, when Marcos imposed martial law in 1972, among his first acts was a proclamation that the entire nation was to be considered a ‘land reform area,’ and a declaration that all tenants working land devoted to rice and corn were to be the owners of that land, up to a specified limit.
“Despite the enraged opposition of the oligarchy (composed of the land-owning political families like the Aquinos and Cojuangcos and the landed aristocracy), the program proved to be extraordinarily successful. Coupled with the infrastructure and mechanization improvements, a quarter of a million peasants became land owners, and grain productivity increased by half.
“Another major step after the declaration of martial law was to contract with Westinghouse for the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant – which was to be the first and would still be the only commercial nuclear plant in Southeast Asia…” (The nuclear plant, though fully completed, was never used because it was mothballed by Cory Aquino, one of the first acts of her presidency.)
Nuclear energy was not the only innovation of the Marcos regime, EIR reported. In 1979 Marcos announced a plan for 11 major industrial projects, with the intention of shifting the focus of the nation’s economy from consumer goods to basic heavy industry, such as steel, petro-chemical, pulp and paper, a copper smelter, gas and oil, among others.
“During the martial law years from 1972 to 1981, the EIR report noted, the Marcos government tripled the road network, doubled the electrification of homes, increased irrigated cropland eight-fold, and achieved rice and corn self-sufficiency, minimum wage rates tripled. But this level of development was not to be tolerated by the international institutions.” -30- Nestor Mata, Malaya Newspaper
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Thought of the Day… “Never underestimate the power of one person to have an impact in this world, touching one person at a time.” – Anon.
